How Nightclub Design Evolved

Nightclubs are traditionally seen as unprepossessing spaces and their design has been hardly documented. But a new perception, Night Fever: Designing Club Culture, 1960-Today, at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein in Germany, takes a detailed look at the evolution of nightclub design worldwide.

Vintage night clubs

During the economic boom of the 1960s, club design entered a highly creative phase. An explosion of new, anything-goes venues with fantastical interiors offered the bohemian, fun-seeking – and often marginalised ­– a stimulating, tolerant environment where they could freely express themselves. For architects, the clubs’ raw interiors were a boon, providing them with a blank canvas.

The show starts with the invention of the modern club in the context of the 1960s counterculture, then on to club-related fashion and furniture. “We wanted the show, designed by industrial designer Konstantin Grcic, to be multisensory and affective, and this section allows visitors to listen to different genres of music, and features light-and-sound installations,” says Rossi.

The first European disco is said to have been Paris boîte Whisky à Gogo, where, from the 1950s, owner Régine operated two turntables to avoid breaks between tracks. A key reference point for nightclub designers in the 1960s was the (unbuilt) Fun Palace – a self-proclaimed ‘laboratory of fun’. Designed by Cedric Price in 1961 for theatre producer Joan Littlewood, it was a multipurpose, kinetic space featuring moving catwalks and inflatable structures.

Mixed design ideas

There was a cross-pollination between club design in Italy and New York. Two of Space Electronic’s architects, Carlo Caldini and Mario Preti, visited avant-garde New York club Electric Circus, which, like many 1960s Manhattan nightspots, placed more emphasis on intangible, ambient elements – lighting, sound and drugs – than furniture. At Electric Circus, Warhol orchestrated his Exploding Plastic Inevitable events, featuring performances by The Velvet Underground, overlaid with psychedelic light projections. At John Storyk’s club Cerebrum, punters changed into white gowns and lounged on white carpets munching marshmallows.

Many of Italy’s 1960s discos were also radically experimental, for example the Piper in Rome designed by Manilo Cavalli and Francesco and Giancarlo Capolei. “In 1950s Rome, an emerging Pop art movement was celebrating the ephemeral, with happenings and improvisation. We wanted to connect this to architecture,” says Francesco Capolei. “At the Piper in Rome we broke away from the classic nightclub layout with its stage, orchestra and dancefloor.”Instead it had moveable platforms to suit different events. One wall displayed art by the likes of Piero Manzoni and Andy Warhol.

Garage as Night club

In 1969, Radical Design collective Gruppo 9999 transformed an engine-repair shop into eccentric club Space Electronic that staged plays, housed an architecture school and grew vegetables on the dancefloor.

Barbarella, designed by Studio65 and opened in 1972, featured a spaceship-themed DJ booth and bar and fragments of Ionic columns – an ironic nod perhaps to Italy’s over-venerated classical past. Another club, Flash Back, opened in 1973, and boasted scarlet staircases evoking the drawings of Giovanni Piranesi.

In this former theatre, lighting was king. Illuminating the all-important dance floor was a ceiling incorporating mirrored panels and pink neon. Advancing across the floor was a bridge with flashing lights that supported 250 revellers; the structure also scattered glitter and spewed dry ice.

Turning against elite clubs

By the late 1970s and early ’80s, many considered discos such as Studio 54 to be overly commercial and passé, and the Big Apple witnessed the rise of edgier venues like the Mudd Club, among others, which espoused a punk-inspired, DIY sensibility. It invited artist Keith Haring to curate its fourth-floor art gallery, and Haring also created a mural for the Palladium.

Fear of romancing

Northern England had its post-punk big-club counterpart in Manchester’s Haçienda, designed by Ben Kelly. “Its industrial aesthetic was inspired by the spirit of independent record label Factory Records,”Kelly tells BBC Designed. “Its aesthetic also sprang from safety considerations: I wrapped hazard tape around columns to make them easier to see, and set cat’s eyes into the dance floor. I was interested in taking fittings that normally belong in one environment and putting them into another. You entered the club through clear plastic curtains like those you’d see in an abattoir.”

Of course, there’s the danger of romanticising nightclubs as avant-garde and socially progressive. Take London’s Ministry of Sound, which opened in 1991 and is now a corporate phenomenon with its own merchandising and music-publishing business.

Uncertain tradition of clubs

And the exhibition addresses the fact that the future of clubbing is uncertain, thanks to factors such as gentrification – which prioritises office buildings and homes over noisy night clubs – young people drinking less alcohol and digital dating apps.

One way clubs are surviving is by inhabiting multi-use spaces, partly as a way around skyrocketing rents.